Witt's End

This is my feeble (if long-winded) attempt at bridge building and understanding. I started this piece weeks ago. I shelved it after the Charlie Kirk assassination. I picked it back up after President Nelson passed and then had a night where I could stop writing here and elsewhere following the shooting and arson of the chapel in Grand Blanc. I'd be lying if this was easy to commit to paper. But I have to. Rarely have I felt this level of compulsion to write. To share what I have to say.  Let me try. Here's a start. My faith is not what it once was. Surety has been replaced by hope. Which probably isn't a bad thing. The focus is more on fundamentals of belief and the actions they bring.  I have absolutely struggled with the theology, doctrines, practices, policies, and culture surrounding the faith of my youth. I'm open and honest about that. But I worry that's not always returned. The honest assessment that we all struggle with the teachings and guidance of such a l...

I think we all should think that the Amendments of the Constitution Should Matter. That they define a large part of the rights and responsibilities of the subjects and nation we all live in. I worry that is not the case. Why? They're looking at three terms. And the option mentioned in news reports is literally Putin's playbook.  That's what we're dealing with.  We are looking at a body of people fighting for a third term. And I can't believe it.  This administration doesn't care one bit about the constitution. Let's review the 22nd amendment . "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President" It's pretty cut and dry. Now I don't always think the originalism of the supreme court has got it right. But most of the time those my hesitance and disagreements are about differences of recognizing historical precedent and analogues. That was always ...

 Dear God, What are we going to do? I fret. I worry. I toss and turn. I can't lose the sleep that I'm not having. It's a forgone conclusion.  So I'm just talking. Without thinking. Letting these thoughts race.  There are too many suffering. Too many worrying. So much more than me. I have been given much alongside my trials, my tribulations, my sorrows. I can't ever lose sight of that. But tonight. These days. I struggle to go to work without shaking. I struggle to concentrate. And I don't think I'm alone.  I may be considered a snowflake for this. A bleeding heart. That's just who I am. I care.  I know these prayers are usually private. That's the way I was raised. And in my streams of consciousness that's usually how it goes. But right not my heart is breaking. And words on a page makes the most sense to me. Is cathartic. Necessary for me. What can I do? Other than shouting in the void. Other than the limited work I keep doing day after day.  It...

I hate not being believed. That's happened a lot recently. But the pain of this one has been offset by a pain that came before.  I want to take us back to COVID times. One of the darkest times in my life.  When COVID was tearing through this country. Early on in the process I was pulled up from working in long term care and hospice to help run an emergency unit for COVID patients. These patients were residents of the Washington State Veterans Home. The unit was dealing with an outbreak. We had to stand up and isolate a unit and pull staff from all over the hospital to help provide care for these veterans and spouses.  I was working in the Community Living Center as a nurse's aid. That portion of the VA was a two wing unit that was a rehab and hospice center. We had to clear all of those patients out and move them into other portions of the hospital to make our COVID unit.  During my time on that unit I helped nurses from primary care navigate the EHR they'd never use...

Process matters. How we do something is as important as the what and the why in government. I'm an institutionalist. And I'm worried about the long term ramifications of what we're seeing happening.  I'm all for putting in the work to streamline our national budget. We need to examine for waste, fraud, and abuse. I would argue the largest factor is waste with a lot of redundancies. We can do what we can to increase efficiency. But the executive needs to be restrained in how they do it. For two major reasons.  One, congress is delegated the purse. Period. Article one of the Constitution. Congress handles the budget and taxation. The most democratic portion of the the entire federal system (the house) is supposed to originate all related legislation. It's their job to fix this. To work on it. Now the executive can veto and can provide guidance. They're in the perfect place to address these issues. They could impound and work with congress through the proper proced...

I'm trying to be more sympathetic and understanding about how people from the same church can have such different views on so many topics. I'm trying to dig at the incongruence between t he doctrine of my chosen religion and my personal expression of faith.  Trying to look at how that exists in all of us. Because I think if we don't have some of this conflict we're lying to ourselves.  I think I have to start this off with something that really troubled me a couple years ago. Vaccines and religious exemptions. During the time of COVID this conflict caused a lot of stress for me. I was an immunocompromised healthcare worker in an ICU. During the time that the vaccine was coming out I was amazed at the number of fellow healthcare workers that were opposed to the vaccine. What was even more distressing to me was the number of fellow members of my church that were in such opposition to masking and vaccination. Things the church actively supported . There was a cognitive dis...

  Some of my favorite people are now on the opposite side of the political aisle from me. Hell I’d argue we’re on opposite sides of the spectrum itself at this point. But I love them. And I’m trying to figure out how to navigate this time without alienating them (any more than what has already occurred). How do I stand for what I believe in? How do I be a perceived light without burning it all down? I think I found my path through this.  I am striving for things instead of just opposing things. And that mindset shift has been incredible. I didn’t do what I’ve done in my life to feel lost. It’s time to stand for things again. I believe in things. That should be the priority and take my time more than things I don’t believe in.  It's been an enlightening and emboldening. And it’s lead to three or so realizations.  First discussions and debates can only be had with people who are willing to participate in good faith who agree on essential facts. And personally I’m only ...

 Most people agree with statements like, "all people deserve dignity and respect." I mean it's a fairly universal platitude. It's why people of all creeds and stripes latch on so much to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech (or at least parts of it). But there's a problem with what dignity and respect mean. There's a divide on how that respect is expressed and represented.  Race, sexuality, gender identity, disability status etc are not equally respected in our nation. We're moving toward legal parity (we're not quite there yet but we're working on it), but the reality is our nation has gulfs we need to correct.  There is disparity of outcomes when it comes to race , there are worse mental health outcomes for marginalized groups , and t hese groups are the majority of recipients of hate crimes . Looking at those scenarios it can be difficult to reconcile wanting everyone to get along with the reality of the scenario.  I wo...

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." We all know this quote by Martin Luther King Jr. The famous line from the I Have a Dream speech. I know it was the first one that I truly knew. For many people I fear it's the only one. It's the thesis in some ways of his ideas but it's not the full scope. For me my deeper understanding of the man came with reading through some of Strength to Love. I came across the quote that's stuck with me the most.  “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” It hit me like a ton of bricks when I first read it. It was Christlike love. It was the golden rule. As I began to understand his commitment to non-violence it made even more sense. ...

 I've said this before. Politics requires compromise of one moral values. Whether religious, spiritual, humanistic you have to compromise. It doesn't matter if you're left or right politically. You're compromising.  I come to this from a religious background. One of faith and both spiritual and religious. And it's a struggle.  Most of us religious will at some point struggle with dogma, have a faith crisis, struggle with rectifying a doctrine. Religion isn't cookie cutter make to fit. Politics aren't either. They're bigger than us and that requires a compromise. Let's own it and talk about it a little bit more. It's not a bad thing.  We all have a set of morals. For many of us it's developed through our religious practices, cultural norms, or human experience. We know for ourselves what's right and what's wrong and we have drawn our ethics around how best to observe that. From person to person it varies.  I can't write about this ...

We’ve all seen the memes, read the tweets, seen the TikToks, I can have friends with a different opinion than my own. I can have people in my life with different lifestyles than me.  I think all of us can. But all of us leverage point where an opinion or practice becomes too much. Where an opinion becomes too much for a friendship to bear. That’s hard to hear. I know but hang on.  We can’t have a familiar relationship with everyone. Not even a friendship with everyone. That’s ok. Not establishing a relationship just means you’re not establishing intimacy and expectations. We can’t open up to everyone. It’s just not feasible. And that’s something we need to realize moving forward.  It doesn’t mean you won’t be kind. It doesn’t mean you won’t be respectful. It just means you’re not letting someone in.  It’s ok to set that boundary based on what someone espouses to believe.  Where’s that line? I can’t answer you, but I can answer it for me. Here’s the long-winded e...

Where do we draw the line between our religion informing our morals and values and imposing it on others? That separation is real. “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics of geometry.” Thomas Jefferson "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" John Adams "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." Thomas Jefferson That's the political governmental separation. We can look on the religious side as well. “claim no privilege but what we feel cheerfully disposed to share with our fellow citizens of every denomination.” Joseph Smith and the First Presidency How do I impose my religious views on othe...

Do we speak to the rule or do we speak to the exception?  Do we speak to rules generally or specifically? How do we prioritize the rules we follow and apply? When I look at laws that require exceptions I feel we should write to the exception. Now the laws that came to my mind immediately were abortion. But I think we can also apply this to things like welfare requirements etc.  Blackstone tell us, " It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."  Benjamin Franklin took it one step further, " "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer". Our legal system is founded on this ideal. That a bulwark to false convictions must be so steadfast that some guilty men and women will escape punishment. Why isn't that same ideal applied to our laws and policies as they're written.  I hear so many people talk about how we have to stop people who don't "deserve" welfare from receiv...

 One third of military personnel will face a mental health crisis in their service. That’s one third of soldiers in garrison, one third of sailors on a cruise, and one third of personnel returning from a deployment. One third. I was thinking about that in light of something that will be hard to write about. Gun control. Red flag laws. We have to be ultra careful in how we discuss mental health and firearms access.  I keep hearing it's not a gun issue it's a mental health issue. What's that even mean? What mental illness, what specific set of diagnoses in the DSM is causing the issues with guns. I say this because I have spent time with severely depressed, anxious people in high stress jobs I trusted to have a gun around me. I knew both their mental health status and their capability. With the constant nature of deployments, and the strain of constant training, mental health. We need to be honest about what aspects of mental health result in someone being a danger to themsel...

I've come to a realization there is either a women's right to choose or there isn't.  I can't look at trigger laws that ban all abortions with no rape and incest exceptions and think there is anything less than a duality happening. Most of these states don't even allow for the early delivery of an unviable pregnancy or fetus. That's medically an abortion. But it's not listed. Just I wish people would actually read the texts of these bills. Arkansas-https://advance.lexis.com/documentpage/?pdmfid=1000516&crid=e2fa69e2-770e-4beb-81d1-6f65d9ce59e9&pdistocdocslideraccess=true&config=00JAA2ZjZiM2VhNS0wNTVlLTQ3NzUtYjQzYy0yYWZmODJiODRmMDYKAFBvZENhdGFsb2fXiYCnsel0plIgqpYkw9PK&pddocfullpath=%2fshared%2fdocument%2fstatutes-legislation%2furn%3acontentItem%3a5VP3-XJT0-R03K-50GB-00008-00&pdcomponentid=234171&pdtocnodeidentifier=AAFAAHAACAAEAAF&ecomp=pghckkk&prid=ffce55be-acb2-4261-823f-7a08f76350a2 Louisiana-https://legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.a...

Many times in history we have had people called out for having dual loyalties between their religion and their government. That one's patriotism is tainted by their faith. In our own history we have the Quakers, Catholics, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, all called out at various times and circumstances. Our nation is based on partially on the puritans and their troubles with the British government. Throughout history and in various countries Jewish people were scapegoated and their loyalties called into question. And in the modern era Muslim citizens of multiple nations face bigotry and prejudices over it.  The animus that arises between religions and governments in not new. Sadly it hasn't changed in time.  If anything it’s gotten worse.  Now we’ve added something new and gotten to the point where not only can your patriotism be questioned by your religious affiliation, your religiosity can be absolutely questioned by your political affiliation. It is absolutely insane...

 I don't fully understand the Florida "don't say gay" House Bill 1557 . I don't. I keep seeing posts like this on social media and I'm lost.               When I was 5 I wasn't in elementary school but by the time I was in first grade at age 6 I did. The text of the bill bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation, gender identity, sexuality, from grades K-3 and through grade 12 limits it based on development etc. This not a bill about sex ed.  So we shouldn't talk about marital relationships or status in schools? That's weird to me. Because I knew the difference between Miss (Ms.) Missus (Mrs.) and Mizz (Ms.) by first grade. I knew their marital status. I knew that those that were married had a husband. My children have had classmates with two parents of the same gender, and have met family friends in homosexual pairings. It's an unavoidable aspect of life. One that we need not hide from. How this will be discussed intrigues and wo...